Thicker Thighs and Legs The extra fat then gets distributed to places where women most often put on weight: the backside, hips, and thighs." It can take up to a year to lose the weight gained during pregnancy, says Dr. Dawson.
As you grow your baby, your body carries more water than it usually would. This excess water tends to drain into the lower parts of your body which can cause your legs in particular to look larger than usual.
Your body may have become wider during pregnancy. This is because it was making room for your growing baby. Your ribs may have expanded, and your hips will often widen to make it easier for the baby to exit the birth canal. For some women wider ribs and hips will be permanent.
Widening hips allow for the baby to pass through the pelvic bone during birth. You can rest assured that your widening hips, in most cases, will return back to their pre-pregnancy state, usually by 12 weeks postpartum.
All women will experience some kind of weight gain during their pregnancy, and it's not always easy to get rid of afterward. Many women will also develop cellulite, which can be even more difficult to get rid of than the extra belly fat. Unfortunately, cellulite won't just fade away after your pregnancy.
Loose skin may never regain its prepregnancy appearance without medical treatment. However, diet and exercise can help reduce the appearance of loose skin after pregnancy over time. Improvement will depend on: a woman's weight and age before pregnancy.
Pregnancy can bring lots of changes to your skin. Most of them disappear after delivery, but sometimes there's loose skin left behind. Skin is made of collagen and elastin, so it expands with weight gain. Once stretched, skin may have trouble returning to its original shape.
“There is no “normal” amount for hips to widen but on average hips typically widen by about 1.5 inches during pregnancy. “And while your hips will move back after birth, it is more common for your hips to be a few cams wider forever than it is for them to go completely back to the same width they were before.”
Body shape
During pregnancy, our body changes. Our hips widen, our breasts grow, and we find a little extra weight in places it wasn't before. Over time, our bodies will go back to normal, but it takes just that time.
Some pregnant people notice acne, hyperpigmentation, or a "pregnancy mask" (the darkening of pigmentation around the mouth, cheeks, and forehead also known as melasma). Exhaustion and water retention may lead to under-eye pouches, while increased blood flow can cause spider veins across the face.
Others develop health problems during pregnancy. The two major pregnancy and delivery complications women face are pre-eclampsia (a condition marked by high blood pressure, swelling and signs of damage to the kidney or liver), and gestational diabetes — a form of the illness that develops during pregnancy.
Binding the hips immediately after birth can help stabilize loosened pelvic joints, and help hips return to their pre-pregnancy position. Binding the hips helps narrow the circumference of the pelvic bones, so you can lose inches around your hips even without postpartum weight loss.
No matter how you delivered your baby, the postpartum recovery period is generally considered to be the first six weeks after childbirth. This doesn't mean that at six weeks you'll magically bounce back to pre-baby condition.
However, during pregnancy, too much relaxin can be released into the system. When this happens, the excess of relaxin causes the ligaments responsible for stabilizing the pelvis to loosen up too much. This can cause pain in the inner thigh and groin area.
Your uterus, which enlarged as your baby grew, will take about six to eight weeks to contract back to normal size. During this process, you may experience cramping, bleeding, a heavier-than-normal period, and/or vaginal discharge. Your abdominal wall muscles will slowly regain their muscle tone over time.
The researchers found that women who had live births had telomeres that were an average of 4.2 percent shorter than their counterparts with no children. This equates to around 11 years of accelerated cellular aging, said Anna Pollack, an epidemiologist at George Mason University and the lead researcher of the study.
But it can take weeks or months for the body to recover from pregnancy and childbirth. Typically about 13 pounds comes off immediately after childbirth, and another 5 to 15 pounds over the first six weeks. It can take six months to a year to lose the rest.
Between the sleepless nights, endless worries, and persistent temper tantrums, parenting can feel like a fast track to gray hairs and wrinkles. Now, researchers at Northwestern University have proven what we've suspected all along: having children does, in fact, speed up the aging process.
Your body is still healing.
“Many women gain a large amount of gestational weight. And after the baby comes, you have less time to exercise, less sleep, and your body is still healing from pregnancy and delivery,” explains Laura Arndt, a pre- and postnatal expert and the CEO of Matriarc.
Some pregnant women develop dark irregular patches on their face most commonly on the upper cheek, nose, lips, and forehead. This is called 'chloasma'. It is also sometimes known as 'melasma' or the 'mask of pregnancy'.
It really depends on the elasticity of a woman's skin, how much it stretched during her pregnancy, and postpartum weight loss, Pivarnik says. “There are plenty of fit women who don't have tight abdominal skin to start with,” he says.
The best way of getting rid of stomach overhang is a surgical procedure known as abdominoplasty at our London clinic, which will remove it completely. This procedure tightens the stomach muscles and removes excess skin and fatty tissues from the middle and lower abdominal region.
In our childbirth education classes at Blooma we encourage students to abide by the 5-5-5 rule the best they can. New mothers should plan to spend at least 5 days in the bed, 5 days on the bed, and 5 days near the bed. Do you remember birthing your placenta? There is a wound that size that needs to heal.